While Canadians look to the Green Party for principled leadership on the environment and social justice, the federal Green co-leaders appear to be using the party’s already limited media visibility to advocate for something else entirely: a massive national expansion of militarized civil defence infrastructure.
In a press conference reported by CBC News, Green Party co-leader Jonathan Pedneault unveiled an ambitious—and alarming—plan to build a 120,000-person national civil defence corps, expand Canada’s reserve forces by 20,000, and increase investment in Arctic defence and tactical training programs. The proposal, framed as a response to wildfires, climate instability, and “geopolitical fault lines,” would amount to a historic reorientation of the party’s priorities—away from peace and ecology, and toward military infrastructure, national service, and billions in federal spending on preparedness programs.
“Every Canadian, young or old, will have access if they want to basic emergency preparedness skills, first aid, cyber security, crisis response,” said Pedneault, adding that “optional defence skills training” such as firearms use, tactical first aid, and survival techniques would be made widely available.
Pedneault insisted to CBC that “this is not a call for militarization,” but it’s difficult to interpret a proposal of this scale as anything else. Framing the plan as a “whole-of-society effort to build resilience, defend our democracy and strengthen our communities,” the co-leader offered few words on environmental protection, Indigenous rights, climate justice, or decolonization.
Indigenous Participation as a Military Strategy?
One of the most jarring moments in the announcement was Pedneault’s assertion that Canada should “place Inuit, Dene, Gwich’in, and other Indigenous nations at the heart of our Arctic Indigenous strategy”—in the context of expanding military and civil defence infrastructure.
This is not reconciliation. Indigenous communities should not be treated as foot soldiers for colonial Arctic militarization. Green Party leaders cannot claim to oppose colonial violence while proposing to use Indigenous people and their lands to bolster Canada’s military presence in the North.
“Canada lags behind its democratic allies in terms of civilian readiness,” Pedneault claimed, echoing rhetoric more commonly heard from hawkish think tanks and national security officials than Green Party press conferences.
The CBC article notes that the plan would cost “tens of billions of dollars,” which Pedneault brushed aside by insisting that now is the time to spend more federally, not less. He suggested funding the program by taxing large corporations—a rare nod to redistributive policy in an otherwise security-dominated platform rollout.
Militarism by Another Name
Pedneault’s framing—emphasizing resilience, emergency response, and national cohesion—is tailored to distance the plan from conventional military recruitment or war preparation. But the proposals themselves tell a different story: this is a call to rearm and retool Canadian civil society under the banner of “defending democracy,” a phrase increasingly used by politicians to justify militarization and surveillance.
It is particularly concerning that the Green Party is prioritizing this message in the early days of the 2025 federal election campaign. While Elizabeth May has remained silent on Gaza, and the party has yet to fully back member-supported calls for sanctions on Israel, co-leader Jonathan Pedneault is choosing to emphasize firearms training, cyber-defence, and Indigenous-based Arctic defence initiatives.
Meanwhile, the climate emergency—the defining crisis of our time—barely received a mention.
If the Green Party of Canada wants to be seen as a credible vehicle for ecological transformation and peace, it must clarify why it is devoting such significant political capital to military proposals rather than peacebuilding, social investment, and climate justice.
Reconciliation does not mean expanding state militarization into Indigenous lands.
Ecological security cannot be achieved through guns and uniforms.
And democracy cannot be defended by turning Canada into a fortress.
